Help

Cuss and smoke fill the air but I don’t care.  Another guerilla night out it was then.

 

I sit there, a chair away from the carpeted wooden duck with two bits of a stair and glaring heavy colored lights. There was Basti then, there was Jet and then Kevin and a lot more like them—Gods of music, fathers of Rock.  Great musicians came all together as one for a night of selfless performance for the typhoon-stricken people in the Visayas. 

At some point, we closed our eyes and bowed our heads. We offered some bits of silence. And then we raised our glass to cheer for the brave members of those families who passed over.

We made a toast for a man and all his likes, who lost his home, his wife, his kids, but who decided to stay when he had all the reasons not to. 

The Dawn performing "Iisang Bangka"

It was tonic ecstasy that got me high. But it was the genuine heart of the people in that night that pulled me up, touched my heart and revived what has been a long and standing affection for these men —  the men of black shirts and electric guitars, with a cigar and a beer in each hand, with hearts of gold and ecstatic hype to rally round the hapless with their  trembling growls  and guitar string-callused hands.  

Jet Pangan

Basti & Kevin 

- HELP Concert; 19East bar